Inflatable rafts, trashed awnings, red cups and towels made up mounds of garbage left on a Virginia beach following a Memorial Day weekend event called Floatopia.
Video footage and pictures of the garbage circulated widely online, causing angry reactions from some people in the community.
A crew of only nine people arrived Monday morning to clean up the mess and the total amount of trash removed? Ten tons.
Floatopia is a massive start-of-summer party at Chic’s Beach and during Memorial Weekend it drew hundreds of people for a day of drinking and lounging in the Chesapeake Bay, WCNC-TV reported.
“It’s a big party. It gets bigger every year,” Chris Kane, a local resident, told WAVY. “Wall to wall people, wall to wall fun, lots of music, lots of dancing.”
But after the big event, photos of a messy beach spread quickly online.
I was disappointed to wake up this morning to see images of trash all over our beautiful Chesapeake Bay beach after…
Posted by Councilman Michael Berlucchi on Monday, May 27, 2019
“I was disappointed to wake up this morning to see images of trash all over our beautiful Chesapeake Bay beach after Sunday’s festivities. We can do better than this! Let’s work together to keep our city beautiful and clean,” councilman Michael Berlucchi wrote in a Facebook post.
Virginia Beach Public Works spokesman Drew Lankford said that a crew arrived Monday morning and removed the 10 tons of garbage.
That’s 20,000 pounds of trash.
“It was food wrappers, cans, bottles, pieces of floats, towels, everything,” Lankford told WCNC-TV.
“It was almost like they saw a tornado coming and everybody just got up and ran for safety and left everything there.”
[arve url=”https://www.facebook.com/melissa.noel.796/videos/2743752155640573/” aspect_ratio=”9:16″ /]
Local resident Melissa Noel recorded a video that showed piles of trash garnered. The footage was uploaded to Facebook and has now over 1.1 million views.
“I had never seen the beach look like that before and I had originally just posted it to my Facebook page and my friend asked me to make it shareable and then all of a sudden it really got big”, Noel told WTKR,
Hey @VBPD how about getting a handle on this next year ?? Drunks/illegal parking everywhere…Floatopia…locals can't even enjoy the beach…Ocean Park/Lesner Bridge pic.twitter.com/f8dtA7DMEJ
— Jeannie Kartis (@jeannie_kartis) May 26, 2019
“Total disrespect for our bay, our animals, beach, and our private property,” local resident George Marino added. “Lots of floats, lots of wood, lots of things to party with. Beer cans and different types of food. Socks were everywhere.”
And Noel was not the only resident in the area who was disappointed with what the party people had left behind.
“Total disrespect for our bay, our animals, beach, and our private property,” local resident George Marino added.
“Lots of floats, lots of wood, lots of things to party with. Beer cans and different types of food. Socks were everywhere.”
Sadly, people are lazy and we have become a selfish society. Mother Nature is a beautiful thing but I believe people are taking her gift and ruining it.
My children were taught that you picked up after yourself, and so were their children. What in the world happened that made that simple concept obsolete?
